"Pobuda!" Skiljah snapped.
"Eh?"
"None of that. Not from anyone of my loghouse. We have nothing to prove. I want everyone able to carry meat home. Not one another."
Pobuda frowned, but did not argue.
"Do they do that?" Marika asked her dam.
"Sometimes," Skiljan admitted. "To show courage. Behind the ear is a good spot, though. For an arrow." Skiljan cocked her head, sniffed the breeze. A definite, strong smell preceded the kropek. "Only place an arrow will kill one of them. Not counting a low shaft upward into the eye."
"Why use bows, then?"
"Enough hits will slow them down. It will be stragglers mostly, that we get. The old, the lame, the stupid, the young that get confused or courageous or foolish." She looked at Marika with meaning. "You stay outside me. Understand? Away from the herd. Use your bow if you like. Though that will be difficult while running. Most important, make plenty of noise. Feint at them when I do. It is our task to keep them running." As an afterthought, "There are some advantages to hunting in the forests. The trees do keep them scattered."
Skiljan had to speak loudly to be heard over the kropek. Marika kept averting her gaze from the brown line. So many of them!
The tenor of the rumble changed. The herd began moving faster. Faintly, over the roar, Marika heard the ululation of meth hunting.
"Ready," Skiljan said. "Just after the leaders come abreast of us. And do what I told you. I will not carry you home."
"Yes, Dam." All those venturesome thoughts she had had back at the packstead had abandoned her. Right now she wanted nothing more than to slink off with Kublin, Zambi, and the males.
She was scared.
Pobuda gave her a knowing look.
The roar of hooves became deafening. The approaching herd looked like a surge in the surface of the earth, green becoming sudden brown. Lean, tall figures loped along the near flank, screaming, occasionally stabbing with javelins.
"Now," Skiljan said, and dashed toward the herd.
Marika followed, wondering why she was doing such a foolish thing.
The Degnan rushed from the woods shrieking. Arrows arced in among the herd leaders, who put on more speed. Skiljan darted in, jabbed a male with her javelin. Marika made no effort to follow. At twenty feet she was as close as ever she wanted to be. The eyes of the ugly beasts held no fear. They seemed possessed of an evil, mocking intelligence. For a moment Marika feared that the kropek had plans of their own for today.
Distance fled. With speed came quick weariness. The meth who had been running the herd fell away, their hunting speed temporarily spent. They trotted while they regained their breath. The kropek seemed incapable of tiring.
There was endurance and endurance, though. Meth could move at the quick trot indefinitely, though they were capable of only a mile at hunting speed.
A male feinted toward Skiljan. Pobuda and Gerrien were there instantly, ready to slip between it and the herd if it gave them room. It moved back, ran hip to shoulder with another evil-eyed brute. Marika shuddered, imagining what would become of someone unlucky enough to fall in their path.
Another male feinted. Again huntresses darted in. Again the beast faded back.
Marika tried launching an arrow. She narrowly missed one of the huntresses. Her shaft fell with no power behind it, vanished in the boil of kropek. She decided not to try again.
Her lungs began to burn, her calves to ache. And she was growing angry with these beasts who refused to line up and die.
A third male feinted. And she thought, Come out of there, you! Come out here where I can-
It wheeled and charged her, nearly falling making so sudden a turn.
She did not stop running, but neither did she try to evade its angry, angling charge. She froze mentally, unable to think what to do.
Pobuda flung past, leaping over the kropek. She planted her javelin in its shoulder as she leapt. A second later Gerrien was on the beast's opposite flank, planting her own javelin as the kropek staggered and tried to turn after Pobuda. It tried to turn on Gerrien, then. Barlog jabbed it in the rear. It sprang forward, ran farther from the herd.
Then it halted and swung around, right into Marika. She had no choice but to jump up, over, as a big, wide mouth filled with grinding teeth rose to greet her.
She leapt high enough. Just barely high enough. Her toes brushed its snout.
"Keep running!" Skiljan yelled.
Marika glanced back once. The kropek stood at bay, surrounded.
Did I do that? Did I bring it out? she wondered. Or was it coincidence?
So try it again. But there was no time. They were approaching the obstacles built that morning. Marika watched her dam closely.
Skiljan slowed and turned away from the herd, to give the flood room to break around the barriers.
But the herd did not swing. It drove straight ahead at full speed, into the obstacles.
How many tons of kropek flesh in that raging tide? More than could be calculated. The barriers collapsed. Kropek climbed over kropek. The air filled with squeals of anger and agony.
Beyond, scores of huntresses were in flight. They had expected the herd to break up and pass around them. Now they used their speed advantage to angle away from that unstoppable wave. Most of them made it.
Skiljan did not pick up the pace again. When the Degnan came even with the barricade, they stopped, well away from the flow. Skiljan said, "There will be many stragglers here once the main herd passes."
Marika thought about loosing an arrow. Pobuda read her mind. "You would be wasting your shafts, pup. Save them."
It seemed hours before the last of the herd passed.
Skiljan was right. There were many stragglers, though those kropek that had gone down early were now little more than bloody stains in the trampled earth. The pack moved in, began the slaughter.
The stragglers clumped up in a compact mass. The heavily tusked females faced outward, held the line while the quicker, more agile males awaited a chance to leap upon their tormentors.
Down the valley the herd became congested at the narrow place. It had to force its way through a storm of missiles hurled by scores of huntresses safely perched atop high rocks. Over the next few days most of the wounded kropek would be run down and finished.
Marika tried luring one forth from the group encircled at the broken barrier. She had no luck.
Her talent-if such it was, and not a curse-was terribly unreliable.
The huntresses began picking on the more volatile males among the stragglers, one at a time. Tormented sufficiently, the beast would launch a furious charge that would expose it to attack from all sides. That made for slow work, but the number of animals dragged away for cooling out and butchering increased steadily.
There was no mercy in the huntresses, and seemingly no end to the hunt. With nightfall the males built fires from the remains of the barricades. Their light reflected redly from the eyes of the kropek still besieged. None of those rushed forward now. Which made it a standoff for the time being, though missiles kept arcing in, doing some damage. Very limited damage. Striking from head on, most just bounced off.
Fires burned all along the valley. Everywhere, on both sides of the river, meth were butchering, and gorging on organ meats. Marika thought her stomach would burst.
From the end of the floodplain came the continued squeal and rumble of kropek trying to force the narrows.
Skiljan finally allowed Marika to retrieve her bedroll, then to go settle down with the other pups, where she found Kublin in a state of exhaustion so acute she was frightened. But he did not complain. In that he was becoming something more admirable than Zamberlin, who carped about everything, though nature had equipped him far better to take it.